Name: Graham Hancock on Archaeological Mysteries in the Amazon
Uploaded: 2023-10-25T17:31:07.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Graham Hancock on Archaeological Mysteries in the Amazon' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Graham Hancock on Archaeological Mysteries in the Amazon' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-25. Transcript available.

the Joe Rogan experience. So what I see in the Amazon is traces of a lost
science a scientific a scientific mindset mm-hmm can I show some pictures
please please we have to hook up the magical HDMI and I'll just show I'll
just show a few slides of them I forget which side the HDMI is in I think it's
in that side careful with the water yeah okay are we are we on screen we will
be
momentarily here we go yeah so so this shows the Amazon 6.7 million square
kilometers is still five and a half million left covered by rainforest that's
bigger than the entire subcontinent of India and hardly any archaeology has
been done and the archaeology that is being done is fascinating and it's
particularly in the state of Acre in in the southwest of Brazil that we're
seeing
these extraordinary geoglyphs now I'm here with I'm on the on the left there
that's
Marty Parsinen from the University of Helsinki and that is Fabio Filho who's
the lidar expert and that's I'll say Iran see who's a Brazilian geographer and
archaeologist and we're looking at the latest lidar discoveries and there I'm
about to take off in a plane with these two guys it was just incredible to fly
over there I've flown over the Nazca lines many times but to fly over this and
to
see these huge earthworks on a scale of hundreds of meters sitting there often
and encroached on by farms was very very very exciting and what's the
conventional explanation for these things there is no conventional explanation
because really it's it's only begun to be studied I'll say you first notice
them on
an overflight more than 20 years ago but it's only relatively recently that
they've
started to get the funding and I want to pay tribute to Eugene jong who is a
philanthropist who has provided funding for these guys to continue their work
and
who's also provided funding to the comet research group and is also provided
funding for the DMT research that's being done at UCSD what's his name Eugene
jong he's a brilliant brilliant j-h-o-n-g he's a brilliant philanthropist and
he's so open-minded and he's looking to support research in areas that the
mainstream just won't touch that's amazing so we're looking at Fazenda Sipoal
here
where we have an octagon with rounded corners and then this is Santa's shot of
the
same place and you can see what's going on you see the smoke in the background
there that's the Amazon burning that settlers clearing the Amazon to create
more farms but in the foreground we have this this enormous geometrical event
which is a huge oval surrounding a square and did they find this once they
started clearing is that when this was found as a result of the clearances
that's how that's how it became archaeologists became aware that these
things exist so before that this was completely covered completely covered with
rainforest it was only the it's a sort of mixed blessing or mixed curse if you
like
because the clearances made it possible for us to know that these things exist
but
the clearances ultimately will destroy the entire Amazon if they're allowed to
continue Jack Ossar on the left a square surrounding a circle and here's a
couple of
Santa's shots of Jack Ossar you can see there's a large square earthwork and a
circle in it that's almost not quite but almost like the Greek exercise of squaring
the circle it's like geometrical exercises are taking place here in the Amazon
and and again a square with these curious
Scallops cut into the side of it and a circle. There's just so much of this
stuff. Takino, absolutely giant, giant geoglyph. And these things really, on
the old view of the Amazon, shouldn't exist. They involve enormous expenditure
of effort. Creating these earthworks is a huge job.
If there was a lot of stone in the Amazon, I think we'd see stone circles on
them as well. There's one place further north called Rego Grande where there is
an earthwork with a stone circle in it because stone is locally available.
So do you think this was the base of a structure? What is the speculation?
No, I don't think so. I've talked to indigenous people there who still respect
and revere them. And they say that they were for shamanic journeying, that the
population would gather within them, that there would be certain areas that
might be reserved for the shamans.
For example, the square on the left, those two cutout areas, top left and right
of that square, it's suggested that shamans were in there and the rest of the
population were in the other area.
And they were undertaking visionary journeys, perhaps using ayahuasca. Of
course, the Amazonian peoples are experts in the properties of indigenous
plants.
So this is their folklore? This is their story?
Yes, this is the story of indigenous people.
So that's what they say.
I talked to an Apurina elder and he said, we don't know exactly why these
places were made. They were made so long ago, but we respect them. We revere
them. And we think that they were used by shamans in the distant past.
So they were aware of them before the clearing?
Yeah, they were aware of them before the clearing and they revere them.
Yes, they used them and they still have community gatherings in them. No, they
weren't. They weren't a base for.
For structures. I'm drawing attention here to Severino Calaisans, this large
square on the left there, which has coincidentally the same footprint as the
Great Pyramid of Giza. It just shows you the size of that enormous earthwork.
But it's a mystery. More work needs to be done and much more needs to be surveyed.
And thanks to LiDAR, that can be done non-invasively. We can spot these things.
Very small teams can go in and do a bit of excavation there and figure out what
was going on. I think the story is going to go back further and further into
the past.
Is there any evidence of wood structures? Like, did they make buildings out of
wood back then?
Not that I'm aware of.
When did people start using wood as a structure?
I think you can trace wood back as a structure hundreds of thousands of years.
But when did they start using it in, like, if you see, like, the ancient Mayan
civilizations, what you find in the Amazon, you don't find ancient wood
structures, do you?
I think that's largely an artifact of the fact that wood doesn't preserve very
well.
Right. So how do we know that there weren't wood structures?
There may well have been.
Over these?
There may well have been, which have just rotted away and gone. There may well
have been wooden structures there.
Because it kind of looks like foundations.
It does. It does look like foundations. And it's just a very weird thing. But I
think the main point is…
Someone made it.
Someone made it.
Yeah.
And it involved a very large amount of organized labor in order to make it.
There had to be the will and the intent in order to do that. It's interesting
that the patterns are geometrical.
And are they geometrical, like, with the perfect length?
Yes. Yes. They're very, very good. Fazenda Parana and Severina Kalasanz are
both aligned to true astronomical north. That's different from compass north.
That requires astronomy. You can't get true north without using astronomy.
So this tells us not only was there a culture that was capable of creating
large-scale public projects, but also they had astronomers amongst them.
Wow.
It's a good mystery.
The other thing is the geometrical patterns are a very common experience in ayahuasca
visions in altered states of consciousness.
Our culture tends to despise altered states of consciousness, although
fortunately that's changing.
But in the Amazon and many indigenous cultures, they're regarded as extremely
important.
That we can't confine ourselves to the everyday, wide-awake state of
consciousness that requires us to interface with the physical world.
There are other states of consciousness which are also valuable and which bring
teachings.
And it's just one of those facts that most people who drink ayahuasca, most of
the time, at some point, will experience geometrical visions.
So there's a question, is there a connection here between the use of ayahuasca
and the geometrical patterns?
A huge rock wall has been found in the Colombian Amazon, Cerro de la Lindosa,
which I'm hoping to get to this year.
Eight kilometers long, covered in rock paintings.
The rock paintings are dated more than 12,000 years old.
They show extinct megafauna.
They show giant sloths which went extinct during the Younger Dryas, for example.
And they also show the kind of entities that are seen in ayahuasca visions.
They show the same sort of patterns, the same geometric patterns that are seen
in ayahuasca.
Do you have any images of this place?
Cerro de la Lindosa.
You are connected to the...
Yeah, I don't have images of la Lindosa on here.
Oh, maybe you could Google it.
But if...
Or give the plug back to Jane.
Yeah, I'll give the plug back.
I was trying to Google it and I didn't find anything.
I might have spelled or guessed wrong.
How do you spell it?
De la Lindosa.
La Lindosa.
La Lindosa?
Yeah.
Let me just...
I got it.
I got it.
You got it?
Yeah.
You're going to have to give him the cord real quick and then he'll give it
back to you.
Okay.
There you go.
It's literally an 8-kilometer Sistine Chapel in the Colombian Amazon.
That's the other thing.
I mentioned there's not a lot of rock in the Amazon.
Where there is rock, they used it.
There's rock paintings all over the Amazon where rock is available.
These kind of things.
Yeah, that's it.
These are characteristic of ayahuasca visions.
But in this case, they're more than 12,000 years old.
Now, does that prove they were using ayahuasca 12,000 years ago?
No, no.
That's very similar to like a tryptamine vision though.
Totally.
Totally.
It does suggest that some tryptamine was being accessed at that time and
resulting in these
visionary images.
Boy, they're shitty drawers, weren't they?
Their drawing was terrible.
But bear in mind that they're clambering 100 feet up a sheer cliff in order to...
Still, guys, do a better job.
It's ridiculous.
Create these paintings.
Those people were so fat.
Are those people or sea turtles?
What are those things?
It's really interesting to see.
So this is 11,000.
How old?
12,000 plus.
12,000 plus?
Yeah.
Yeah.
12,000 plus years old.
It's interesting because if you see the paintings that they found in that cave
in France, those
are 30 plus thousand years old, right?
Oh, yeah.
There's paintings in France.
If you go to Chauvet, you're looking 36,000 years old.
Can you go to those, Jamie?
Hollenstein-Stadl in Germany.
That's that amazing Werner Herzog documentary.
They often have...
I think it was the Cave of Dreams.
Cave of Dreams.
Yes.
Yeah.
They often have...
Look at that.
We're looking at Lascaux.
Hang on.
On the...
Yeah.
We're looking at Lascaux there.
The bull painting there is interesting.
They were better artists.
They were.
I have to confess...
They were quite a bit better.
This art is very good.
If you go...
Jamie, if you go to the NPR, the painting of a bull, one step left from where
you are,
that one.
This is very interesting.
There has been an argument made by a couple of astronomers that what is
depicted there is
the constellation of Taurus and that in itself is heresy because archaeologists
who want
to give everything to the Greeks say that it was the Greeks who invented the
constellations
of the zodiac and not showing...
Why do they think that that represents the constellation?
Because of the six little dots which are not, I think, on the head.
I think they're somewhere behind, not in this picture, which is often how the
Pleiades are
seen.
Actually, there are seven Pleiades, but often to the naked eye you see six.
And the positioning of the Pleiades in relation to the constellation of Taurus
is the basis
for that argument.
It could be.
I'm not sure.
It's so long since I've looked at this, but I know that there are six dots
there.
So this cave art was going on all around the world.
Some of the oldest art has been found in Indonesia, you know.
Oh, here it is.
Yeah, there's the Pleiades, the whole argument about the Pleiades.
It's those dots, exactly.
The ones you pointed to above the back of the bull.
One, two, three, four, five, six.
That is how the Pleiades are often seen with the naked eye.
Can you go back to the other...
Yeah, the other...
Wow.
You know, it's an argument.
It's not accepted by mainstream archaeology because of their narrative, which
is that these...
The discovery of the constellations of the zodiac is given to the Greeks or
perhaps to the
Mesopotamians before the Greeks.
It's not thought that any human culture could have noticed the constellations
of the zodiac
before that.
And that's really absurd because the constellations of the zodiac are on the
path of the sun.
The sun rises against the background of a different constellation every month.
And how would the ancients have missed that, especially since the skies were an
ever-present
phenomenon to them in a way that they are not to us?
Right.
We're cut off from the skies by light pollution, but the ancients were not.
What a fascinating concept that they knew about the constellations 30-plus
thousand years ago.
Yeah, and I believe they did.
And we see that again in Gobekli Tepe in Pillar 43 in Enclosure D.
You see a constellation that we recognize as Sagittarius.
Thank you.

Graham Hancock on Archaeological Mysteries in the Amazon

the Joe Rogan experience. So what I see in the Amazon is traces of a lost
science a scientific a scientific mindset mm-hmm can I show some pictures
please please we have to hook up the magical HDMI and I'll just show I'll
just show a few slides of them I forget which side the HDMI is in I think it's
in that side careful with the water yeah okay are we are we on screen we will
be
momentarily here we go yeah so so this shows the Amazon 6.7 million square
kilometers is still five and a half million left covered by rainforest that's
bigger than the entire subcontinent of India and hardly any archaeology has
been done and the archaeology that is being done is fascinating and it's
particularly in the state of Acre in in the southwest of Brazil that we're
seeing
these extraordinary geoglyphs now I'm here with I'm on the on the left there
that's
Marty Parsinen from the University of Helsinki and that is Fabio Filho who's
the lidar expert and that's I'll say Iran see who's a Brazilian geographer and
archaeologist and we're looking at the latest lidar discoveries and there I'm
about to take off in a plane with these two guys it was just incredible to fly
over there I've flown over the Nazca lines many times but to fly over this and
to
see these huge earthworks on a scale of hundreds of meters sitting there often
and encroached on by farms was very very very exciting and what's the
conventional explanation for these things there is no conventional explanation
because really it's it's only begun to be studied I'll say you first notice
them on
an overflight more than 20 years ago but it's only relatively recently that
they've
started to get the funding and I want to pay tribute to Eugene jong who is a
philanthropist who has provided funding for these guys to continue their work
and
who's also provided funding to the comet research group and is also provided
funding for the DMT research that's being done at UCSD what's his name Eugene
jong he's a brilliant brilliant j-h-o-n-g he's a brilliant philanthropist and
he's so open-minded and he's looking to support research in areas that the
mainstream just won't touch that's amazing so we're looking at Fazenda Sipoal
here
where we have an octagon with rounded corners and then this is Santa's shot of
the
same place and you can see what's going on you see the smoke in the background
there that's the Amazon burning that settlers clearing the Amazon to create
more farms but in the foreground we have this this enormous geometrical event
which is a huge oval surrounding a square and did they find this once they
started clearing is that when this was found as a result of the clearances
that's how that's how it became archaeologists became aware that these
things exist so before that this was completely covered completely covered with
rainforest it was only the it's a sort of mixed blessing or mixed curse if you
like
because the clearances made it possible for us to know that these things exist
but
the clearances ultimately will destroy the entire Amazon if they're allowed to
continue Jack Ossar on the left a square surrounding a circle and here's a
couple of
Santa's shots of Jack Ossar you can see there's a large square earthwork and a
circle in it that's almost not quite but almost like the Greek exercise of squaring
the circle it's like geometrical exercises are taking place here in the Amazon
and and again a square with these curious
Scallops cut into the side of it and a circle. There's just so much of this
stuff. Takino, absolutely giant, giant geoglyph. And these things really, on
the old view of the Amazon, shouldn't exist. They involve enormous expenditure
of effort. Creating these earthworks is a huge job.
If there was a lot of stone in the Amazon, I think we'd see stone circles on
them as well. There's one place further north called Rego Grande where there is
an earthwork with a stone circle in it because stone is locally available.
So do you think this was the base of a structure? What is the speculation?
No, I don't think so. I've talked to indigenous people there who still respect
and revere them. And they say that they were for shamanic journeying, that the
population would gather within them, that there would be certain areas that
might be reserved for the shamans.
For example, the square on the left, those two cutout areas, top left and right
of that square, it's suggested that shamans were in there and the rest of the
population were in the other area.
And they were undertaking visionary journeys, perhaps using ayahuasca. Of
course, the Amazonian peoples are experts in the properties of indigenous
plants.
So this is their folklore? This is their story?
Yes, this is the story of indigenous people.
So that's what they say.
I talked to an Apurina elder and he said, we don't know exactly why these
places were made. They were made so long ago, but we respect them. We revere
them. And we think that they were used by shamans in the distant past.
So they were aware of them before the clearing?
Yeah, they were aware of them before the clearing and they revere them.
Yes, they used them and they still have community gatherings in them. No, they
weren't. They weren't a base for.
For structures. I'm drawing attention here to Severino Calaisans, this large
square on the left there, which has coincidentally the same footprint as the
Great Pyramid of Giza. It just shows you the size of that enormous earthwork.
But it's a mystery. More work needs to be done and much more needs to be surveyed.
And thanks to LiDAR, that can be done non-invasively. We can spot these things.
Very small teams can go in and do a bit of excavation there and figure out what
was going on. I think the story is going to go back further and further into
the past.
Is there any evidence of wood structures? Like, did they make buildings out of
wood back then?
Not that I'm aware of.
When did people start using wood as a structure?
I think you can trace wood back as a structure hundreds of thousands of years.
But when did they start using it in, like, if you see, like, the ancient Mayan
civilizations, what you find in the Amazon, you don't find ancient wood
structures, do you?
I think that's largely an artifact of the fact that wood doesn't preserve very
well.
Right. So how do we know that there weren't wood structures?
There may well have been.
Over these?
There may well have been, which have just rotted away and gone. There may well
have been wooden structures there.
Because it kind of looks like foundations.
It does. It does look like foundations. And it's just a very weird thing. But I
think the main point is…
Someone made it.
Someone made it.
Yeah.
And it involved a very large amount of organized labor in order to make it.
There had to be the will and the intent in order to do that. It's interesting
that the patterns are geometrical.
And are they geometrical, like, with the perfect length?
Yes. Yes. They're very, very good. Fazenda Parana and Severina Kalasanz are
both aligned to true astronomical north. That's different from compass north.
That requires astronomy. You can't get true north without using astronomy.
So this tells us not only was there a culture that was capable of creating
large-scale public projects, but also they had astronomers amongst them.
Wow.
It's a good mystery.
The other thing is the geometrical patterns are a very common experience in ayahuasca
visions in altered states of consciousness.
Our culture tends to despise altered states of consciousness, although
fortunately that's changing.
But in the Amazon and many indigenous cultures, they're regarded as extremely
important.
That we can't confine ourselves to the everyday, wide-awake state of
consciousness that requires us to interface with the physical world.
There are other states of consciousness which are also valuable and which bring
teachings.
And it's just one of those facts that most people who drink ayahuasca, most of
the time, at some point, will experience geometrical visions.
So there's a question, is there a connection here between the use of ayahuasca
and the geometrical patterns?
A huge rock wall has been found in the Colombian Amazon, Cerro de la Lindosa,
which I'm hoping to get to this year.
Eight kilometers long, covered in rock paintings.
The rock paintings are dated more than 12,000 years old.
They show extinct megafauna.
They show giant sloths which went extinct during the Younger Dryas, for example.
And they also show the kind of entities that are seen in ayahuasca visions.
They show the same sort of patterns, the same geometric patterns that are seen
in ayahuasca.
Do you have any images of this place?
Cerro de la Lindosa.
You are connected to the...
Yeah, I don't have images of la Lindosa on here.
Oh, maybe you could Google it.
But if...
Or give the plug back to Jane.
Yeah, I'll give the plug back.
I was trying to Google it and I didn't find anything.
I might have spelled or guessed wrong.
How do you spell it?
De la Lindosa.
La Lindosa.
La Lindosa?
Yeah.
Let me just...
I got it.
I got it.
You got it?
Yeah.
You're going to have to give him the cord real quick and then he'll give it
back to you.
Okay.
There you go.
It's literally an 8-kilometer Sistine Chapel in the Colombian Amazon.
That's the other thing.
I mentioned there's not a lot of rock in the Amazon.
Where there is rock, they used it.
There's rock paintings all over the Amazon where rock is available.
These kind of things.
Yeah, that's it.
These are characteristic of ayahuasca visions.
But in this case, they're more than 12,000 years old.
Now, does that prove they were using ayahuasca 12,000 years ago?
No, no.
That's very similar to like a tryptamine vision though.
Totally.
Totally.
It does suggest that some tryptamine was being accessed at that time and
resulting in these
visionary images.
Boy, they're shitty drawers, weren't they?
Their drawing was terrible.
But bear in mind that they're clambering 100 feet up a sheer cliff in order to...
Still, guys, do a better job.
It's ridiculous.
Create these paintings.
Those people were so fat.
Are those people or sea turtles?
What are those things?
It's really interesting to see.
So this is 11,000.
How old?
12,000 plus.
12,000 plus?
Yeah.
Yeah.
12,000 plus years old.
It's interesting because if you see the paintings that they found in that cave
in France, those
are 30 plus thousand years old, right?
Oh, yeah.
There's paintings in France.
If you go to Chauvet, you're looking 36,000 years old.
Can you go to those, Jamie?
Hollenstein-Stadl in Germany.
That's that amazing Werner Herzog documentary.
They often have...
I think it was the Cave of Dreams.
Cave of Dreams.
Yes.
Yeah.
They often have...
Look at that.
We're looking at Lascaux.
Hang on.
On the...
Yeah.
We're looking at Lascaux there.
The bull painting there is interesting.
They were better artists.
They were.
I have to confess...
They were quite a bit better.
This art is very good.
If you go...
Jamie, if you go to the NPR, the painting of a bull, one step left from where
you are,
that one.
This is very interesting.
There has been an argument made by a couple of astronomers that what is
depicted there is
the constellation of Taurus and that in itself is heresy because archaeologists
who want
to give everything to the Greeks say that it was the Greeks who invented the
constellations
of the zodiac and not showing...
Why do they think that that represents the constellation?
Because of the six little dots which are not, I think, on the head.
I think they're somewhere behind, not in this picture, which is often how the
Pleiades are
seen.
Actually, there are seven Pleiades, but often to the naked eye you see six.
And the positioning of the Pleiades in relation to the constellation of Taurus
is the basis
for that argument.
It could be.
I'm not sure.
It's so long since I've looked at this, but I know that there are six dots
there.
So this cave art was going on all around the world.
Some of the oldest art has been found in Indonesia, yo